


error - unable to predict results

by OnyxSphynx



Series: newmann one-shots [77]
Category: Pacific Rim (Movies)
Genre: (mutual), M/M, hermann dealing with the fact that he can't predict newt, ignoring uprising for a hot moment here, nebulous Emotions, probably a Hint of angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-12
Updated: 2019-06-12
Packaged: 2020-05-02 00:21:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,043
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19188145
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/OnyxSphynx/pseuds/OnyxSphynx
Summary: Newt has always been the one thing Hermann can never predict.





	error - unable to predict results

**Author's Note:**

> anon asked: "Hi!!!! so glad you're taking promtps!!!! What about this one? “Not everything is about you, you know.” + “No, this is about you and if you will not value your own life, apparently I must do it for you.”"

“Not  _everything_  is about you, you know!” Hermann shouts at the man across from him. His cane hits the ground hard, echoes in the hallway, and Newt’s practically running to keep up with him.

The words come out biting—more than he’d intended, make Newt’s expression flip from downtrodden to indignant, then snarling right back at him, “I don’t think that, Hermann, you  _know_  that, but I’m right!”

“No you’re not!” Hermann hisses back. “You’ll get yourself  _killed!_  Why can’t it be someone else? Why not—?”

“Because this is  _my work! This is what I’ve dreamed of doing for years,_ Hermann!” Newt throws up his hands, face flushed. “Fuck you for discrediting my work in front of Pentecost—I thought we were  _friends,_  Hermann, but then—then you go and do  _that—!_ ”

“ _We’re not friends!_ ” Hermann barks, “we are nothing more than  _colleagues,_  a fact that seems to consistently elude you,  _Doctor Geiszler._ ”

Newt rocks back on his feet as if hit by some invisible force, expression going blank. For a second, Hermann pauses as well—did something happen? Is he alright?—before he turns and walks away, leaving Newton behind him.

It hurts a bit  ~~a _lot_~~  but it’ll hurt less if he can stop himself from caring now than if he tries to do so later. What he did was for Newt’s own good, he tries to convince himself. He’d get himself  _killed._

* * *

Except.

* * *

It doesn’t work.

It doesn’t work, and Hermann still finds Newton seizing on the floor, falls to the ground, exclaims, “Newton!”, the name cracking almost before he manages to speak it, one hand cupping Newt’s cheek, the other scrabbling to undo the contraption. “Newt!”

And then Newt lurches forward, his hands grasping at the front of Hermann’s jacket, his arms, his shoulders, fingers gripping tightly, painfully, but that means Newt’s  _alive,_  and for now that’s  _enough._

So Hermann helps him to a chair, gets him a cup of water in the only clean cup in the lab, and practically sprints to LOCCENT.

And then Pentecost looks at Newton and says, “I need you to do that again,” and hands him a piece of paper, tells him to find  _Hannibal Chau_  and tells him  _do not trust him_ , and Hermann is biting the inside of his cheek until it bleeds because he’s going to  _do it again_.

“You’re going to kill yourself,” he says, the words falling out almost before he’s even realised that he’s talking.

Newt grins at him, eye bloodshot, the words hitching, says, “I’m a fucking  _rockstar,_  dude, i’ll be  _fine,_ ” and it’s less of a reassurance and more of a statement of defiance, a dare for Hermann to contradict him.

He doesn’t, and then Newt’s off, still unstable as he walks, and that’s when it sinks in, truly, that  _this_  is happening again, that Newt is going to—

Hermann swallows, makes his way over to the chalkboards, picks up a piece of chalk, and stares at the numbers there without really seeing them, because—

He knows the odds, knows them intimately; the odds of surviving one Drift with a kaiju brain: astronomical. The odds that Newt will survive a second are not even worth entertaining.

* * *

Cherno Alpha and Crimson Typhon are both taken out; Otachi makes landfall; Hermann is numb to it all.

And then—“Go,” Pentecost orders, the instant they know that Newt is alive, know where he is, doesn’t specify, because there’s no  _need_  to, not with the way Hermann’s been gripping the head of his cane, worrying his lip raw, and Hermann has never been this happy to obey a command.

“Hermann?” Newt shouts, the wind whipping through his hair, “what are you doing here?” The  _I thought you didn’t care_  goes unsaid. 

“I’m here to help you,” Hermann replies.

Newt laughs at that, full-throated, throws his head back. “I thought it wasn’t about me,” he manages.

“No, this is about you and if you will not value your own life, apparently I must do it for you,” Hermann snaps, and returns to fiddling with the Breach alert tablet, watches as two signals appear, not three.

And then Newt puts on a pons headset without offering one to Hermann, and he realises he didn’t  _understand._  So he draws in a breath and says, “I’ll go with you.”

* * *

“I care too,” is the first proper sentence Newt says to him after, his arm slung across Hermann’s shoulders, grinning like a lunatic, a fact that Hermann knows not because he’s looking at the other, or because of the Drift, but because his face is pressed into the crook of Hermann’s neck, and he can feel the stretch of Newt’s lips against his skin, feel the heat of his breath when he speaks, quiet, so that only Hermann can hear him.

He swallows, intimately aware of the bob of his throat, that the other can probably sense it as well. “I wasn’t aware there was something to  _be_  mutual about,” he says, “I have no idea what you’re referring to.”

“Sure.” Newt goes silent, simply existing, his breaths blossoming across Hermann’s skin, raising gooseflesh. “I think you’re afraid,” he says, finally.

“Of what?” Hermann scoffs, too fast—Newt knows. 

“You’re used to being able to  _predict_  things,” he says—states. “You don’t know how to predict me. You don’t know how to predict us. And that…that scares you.”

“I—” his protests die on his lips. “Yes,” he admits, at length, because it’s true. Of course it is; he’s made his living on predicting things, and for all his genius, Newt has always been the one thing that defies his ability to do what he does; to predict him, Hermann thinks, is possibly one of the few things that exceeds his capacity.

Newt lifts his head, stares Hermann right in the eyes, grin wide, wild, teeth bared. “Good,” he says, “because I’m fucking terrified too. But you…you’re worth it, I think.”

There’s a lump in Hermann’s throat, and when he speaks again, his voice is choked. “The—the sentiment is…mutual.”

Even just the act of speaking it aloud seems to relieve some of the tension that’s built up, and this time, when Newt squeezes his hand, he squeezes back, grins as well.

**Author's Note:**

> you can find me at [three-black-cats](https://three-black-cats.tumblr.com/) on tumblr


End file.
